The European Commission’s proposal for a cross-border mechanism (ECBM): Potential implications and perspectives

Abstract

The European Commission proposed a regulation for a mechanism to resolve legal and administrative obstacles in cross-border regions as part of the legislative package for EU Cohesion Policy 2021-2027. The mechanism is known as ECBM, or European Cross-border Mechanism. The regulation will allow one Member State to apply their legal provision in another Member State for a concretely defined case. This proposal is particularly interesting as it does not give further competence to the European level, but changes how Member States may interact with one another, yet, it raises critiques as regards to its compliance with constitutional, international and European law. This paper outlines the main elements of contention, which are legal justification, state sovereignty, compliance with the subsidiarity and proportionality principle, thematic and territorial scope, voluntariness and the administrative burden. The paper concludes that the assessment of the voluntariness of the regulation will be crucial in examining the regulations compliance with EU principles, and suggest that a more nuanced reading as to which parts of the regulation are voluntary is needed. The legal text will likely change substantially during the legislative procedure, in particular in regard to the thematical scope and the bindingness. This piece summarises the debate currently held in the European Council and the European Parliament in a structured way to an interested readership. Examining the proposed regulation and the arguments for and against it offers the opportunity to review the main arguments that will be raised in any future debate on legal proposals on territorial development initiatives